The DePaul Prep Rams opened the 2021-2022 IHSA 2A Baseball playoffs against the Intrinsic Charter Mustangs. Truth be told, I never heard of Intrinsic Charter. It’s a charter school with two campuses; one in the Loop and one at 4540 West Belmont.
I have to say I was impressed with these players from Intrinsic. There were thirteen of them with two coaches. They knew it would be an uphill climb to get past the Rams. The Rams hung seven on them in the bottom of the first. But the Mustangs didn’t get down. They were enjoying themselves. Really playing for the love of the game. Some of them must have been playing their last organized baseball game ever and they were going to enjoy it. One has to respect that.
That being said, the Rams were just hitting the baseball—crushing the baseball. Anthony Martinez had a homerun, a single and two triples. Had he stopped at second base on his fifth inning triple, he would have hit for the cycle. The other guys were hitting the ball too. There were long home runs into the parking lots.
The Rams scored 16 runs in five innings. To their credit, the Mustangs scored four runs on some nicely struck extra base hits.
The Rams advance to face Timothy Christian on Saturday in the Regional Final at 4:00 p.m. at Kerry Wood Field. Get there early. There will be a big crowd.
As for the photos, I pushed the shutter speed. While there was still some daylight, I was shooting at 1/2000. The resulting extra high ISO made the photos pretty grainy with pretty tight crops I put on. I was playing around with the settings to come up with a good baseball formula. I hope you like the photos.
